[tenfingers]

... or, you could ask everybody to walk, thereby "quadrupling" the effective capacity.

I've been in UK many times, and being able to effectively walk up all escalators due to the diligence of the people always impressed me. Coming from a country that doesn't have such respect for basic rules, it feels just wrong despite the gain of average efficiency.

[stronglikedan]

> you could ask everybody to walk

That assumes that everyone is capable of walking on an escalator. I, for one, am not. I get vertigo, and am on the brink of a panic attack for the entire duration of my ride. I can barely step on one, let alone walk, particularly when going down.

I do look for an elevator whenever possible, but there are times when one is not available and I have to work myself up to the task. I have to grip the handrail with both hands, and focus on a point on the steps themselves.

I'm sure there other issues that people have - like being able to walk but not climb - that would prevent them from being able to walk. Therefore, it's best to have the option to stand on one side and walk on the other.

[saulrh]

waves hand Knee problems here. I can walk up the escalator, but I really don't want to. There's a reason I'm on the escalator instead of the stairs next to them.

[fiatjaf]

The current proposal (stand on both sides) assumes everybody is capable of standing on an escalator. I, for one, am not. I get vertigo, I get mad, I get sad. My body doesn't handle being stuck deep below the surface for very long times, so I must walk up. I usually don't do very long underground trips because of that condition.

[kazinator]

I love the vertigo feeling in long escalators. When I go up, I tilt my head back and stare at the ceiling somewhat above the line of sight to the top. I almost have the sensation that the tube is vertical and I could free-fall backwards at any moment.

[golergka]

How the hell do you perceive it as something good and enjoyable instead of a valid reason to get a panic attack?

[sce]

I've never done that but it sounds neat.

Anyway, I'm guessing the answer to your question is: control. You know that you can at any moment tilt your head forward and lose the vertigo sensation. So you are safe and in control and you also feel safe and in control. That makes the experience enjoyable (I assume).

[golergka]

Ah. See, I have this vertigo too, but it's always on. And I stumbled on escalators a couple of time already, so that increasing my vertigo with 30-50 meters below me doesn't feel like a particularly good idea.

[kazinator]

Probably the same way that some people enjoy roller coasters, sky diving, walking tightropes, climbing vertical walls, ski jumping, flying trapeze, skating or boarding down a "half pipe" and various other "extreme sports" without getting a panic attack.

[johnchristopher]

Neat, I'll try to remember that next time :).

[tajen]

I get vertigo when I'm on a stopped escalator! The habit of seeing the world move is incredibly sticky and makes me dizzy, even if I take the broken escalator twice a day.

OTOH I love stepping down an escalator 2-by-2, the brain has to calculate how far the foot should jump given the size of the steps and the pace of the landscape, it's fun.

[rbobby]

When traveling down, would turning around and facing the other direction help?

It might also allow you to start a short conversation with the traveler above you, eg. "I have vertigo which makes going down escalators tough"... would that sort of distraction be helpful or not?

[jon-wood]

You've not been to London have you? Talking to strangers on public transport is a capital offense.

[jacquesm]

I've violated that rule pretty much every time I've been on the tube and I never had anything but positive responses (and my head is still firmly attached).

[artmageddon]

They're rather polite about it over there, it seems, even though they may be expressing hatred under their breath :)

[jacquesm]

I long ago made a decision that saves me enormous amounts of headache: if you say or do something I will interpret that in the simplest and most straightforward way possible without trying to second-guess ulterior motives or secondary (or further) layers.

Exceptions: poetry, music, jokes and other cultural expressions.

Before then I was always chasing my own tail with 'what do they mean?', which is pointless, if they meant something they could say that particular thing outright and get it over with.

This is symmetrical, so, I don't want to 'wash my hands', I would like to use the toilet. When I'm hungry I say so and when I say 'no problem' it really means that so we can move on.

All in all this made life a lot easier, though from time to time it can make for comedy.

[SuddsMcDuff]

Even making eye contact with a stranger is a faux-pas! That's why everyone pretends to read.

[stronglikedan]

Honestly, I don't know. The anxiety overtakes me to the point where I can barely communicate with the people I know, mush less those I don't. Also, once I'm on, I'm frozen. I've worked up all my nerve just to get on, so I couldn't see myself turning around.

As I say, I try to avoid the escalator, if nothing other than to be courteous. However, sometimes I use it out of courtesy as well, such as when I'm with a group of friends, and don't want them to have to wait on me. When I do need to use it, I've developed a pretty good system of keeping the anxiety in check - sort of a deer in the headlights approach, where my gaze is focused on my shoes.

[mapt]

It also ignores that the density of people in an hypothetical all-walking escalator has to be much lower, because walking people maintain a larger personal space. The graphics imply the density on the walking half of a split elevator is something like a 1/10th the standing half.

[kazinator]

Lower density, but moving faster. Capacity is about flow, which is people per second, not people per inch.

[mapt]

Sure, but most people do not walk ten times as fast (or even twice as fast) as their escalators lift them.

Visual inspection of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fNDgwp_w_s suggests that when two people enter the escalator side by side, the walker exits the escalator at about the same time as the stander is 75% of the way up it (~=133% of the rate of speed). The density of the walking side is surprisingly high to me (maybe accounted for by the short span relative to the monsters I'm used to on WMATA MetroRail), about 60% of the standing side. This leaves 80% throughput for the walking side of short-span split escalators relative to the standing side, only a ten percent overall cut in capacity for this one escalator in Singapore.

That number will probably go down the taller the escalator is, as the walking side slows down due to personal stamina (adjusted walking speed and percent willing to walk), and bunching, a phenomena we're familiar with from busses.

[kazinator]

If walking is just 50% faster than riding (i.e. walkers go at half the speed of the escalator), but requires 50% more space, then it's a break-even situation for capacity. And a win for latency.

[csours]

In traffic, it is not about the latency, it is about the jitter.

[PhasmaFelis]

It required quite a bit more than 50% more space, assuming you want to avoid people being constantly kicked in the shins.

[mapt]

Edited post with math.

[mpitt]

In the graphics, they are spread apart because they are substantially less than half (all the others choose to stand). Walking sure requires a larger spacing, but I would say 1.5-2 times the regular one, not 10.

[c3534l]

I'm reminded of the escalators and NY Penn station. People wait in big huddles to get on the escalator, stand crowded and unable to move with none of that "pass on the left" bit. Meanwhile, a massively wide flight of stairs stands in the middle of the escalators that will often be quite empty even as the crowds to go up the escalator start forming. Hell, they're empty enough people are putting ads on those stairs: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/165/364250541_49959802e8.jpg?...

So good luck getting people to do that.

[nkrisc]

If there are stairs as an alternative to an escalator I always take the stairs unless it's completely empty or I'm carrying something very heavy. I've yet to encounter a staircase built as a part of modern, public transit infrastructure that was too long for a healthy adult to walk.

[michaelt]

If you'd like to encounter one, visit Covent Garden. One of London's deepest tube stations, it has a spiral staircase with 193 steps - the equivalent of a 15-storey building.

That's no problem for an athletic 30-year-old like me - but it'd probably be difficult for a tired elderly fat person wearing high heels while carrying a child and a suitcase.

[jon-wood]

I used to get my daily exercise walking the ~150 stairs at Goodge Street, and I hadn't ever thought to do the maths to turn that into a building. Strangely I'd never even consider climbing a building that tall, but as a single flight of stairs it was fine.

[icebraining]

Yeah, this year I've been gradually getting off of the elevator in a lower storey and climbing the rest, and the turns get old really fast.

[nkrisc]

I would have liked to take those stairs when I last visited London, but I didn't want to keep my family waiting. They preferred to take the lift. At least I think it was that station. It had a lift and a very tall spiral staircase.

I guess I can call an elevator in London a lift...

[zimpenfish]

Ooh, I used to do that as well. Seemed sensible since I was normally being tremendously lazy and getting the tube to there from CHX (in my flimsy defence, even before they buggered everything up around TCR station, the walk from CHX to Goodge Street was mildly unpleasant.)

[SuddsMcDuff]

They should hand out medals at the top of Covent Garden stairs. It's like a badge of honour for Londoners.

Yes I put a U in honor.

[chillydawg]

I get really disorientated doing those stairs. You get into a zone about 2/3 the way up where you just assume it goes on for ever as it's just a uniform spiral dotted with the occasional tourist who can't read "15 story building".

[icebraining]

Here in Lisbon, we have a station with 232 steps. Fun fact: the escalators have been at least partially non-functional 144 times in 2010.

[tajen]

In Madrid I used to walk up the 180 steps, but they were straight. I can't do the ones of Covent Garden because of the spiral.

[madeofpalk]

I I see a bottleneck at an escalator, I like to take the stairs and then watch where I would be in the bottlekneck to estimate how long it would have taken me to take the escalator to validate my choice of taking the stairs.

[droidist2]

Also nice exercise! Stair climbing is boss.

[fiatjaf]

Yes, stairs. I use stairs everywhere. However, some places don't have stairs. It seems the public transit infrastructure doesn't think there are people who can and want to walk in the cities nowadays.

[kmicklas]

The subways in NY are much shallower than in most places in the world (including London I think?). So the stairs aren't so bad there.

[Grishnakh]

Yep, been there, done that. I took the stairs there. Americans are incredibly lazy.

[mattmanser]

I simply don't believe you've been to many London underground stations if you think that.

A lot are steep and scary, the worst of them is a 1.5 minute long ride:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQwERv8V6JA&feature=youtu.be...

The first time you ride that you are not going to want to walk down it, let alone be forced to walk down it!

Other replies to your comment also show a lack of understanding that there are often no stairs because it's an underground station. Like deep underground so they didn't bother with stairs.

[Symbiote]

I never found them scary, but I suppose it depends what you're used to. In some other countries I find escalators to be annoyingly slooooow.

Angel Station's escalator can be done in seven seconds — if you have skis: https://youtu.be/fFqQOlYE4EE?t=25

(I used to use it regularly late at night, when the up escalator was usually empty. Sprinting up, two steps at a time, is quite satisfying.)

[tiredwired]

Maybe a ski resort style chairlift would work there.

[fiatjaf]

They could have the ALL STAND rule for some stations, ALL WALK for others.

Since the government is willing to FORCE people to things they don't want effectively breaking a COMMON RULE OF THE TRADITION they shouldn't bother being reasonable.

Perhaps they should also set optimal speeds and force people to comply. Wait, that's what they're doing!

[austinjp]

It's not "the government" and it's not "force".

[k-mcgrady]

It's not possible to walk up them for a lot of people (health reasons). Even fit people have trouble in some stations as the escalators can be very steep and very long.

[Silhouette]

Even fit people have trouble in some stations as the escalators can be very steep and very long.

Also, the ambient temperature and other atmospheric properties are far from ideal for physical exertion in many of these stations.

That doesn't matter so much if you're generally fit and completely healthy. If, however, you have something like asthma, the environment potentially exacerbates the condition even if you're otherwise in good shape for that kind of exercise.

[fhars]

More likely, that would reduce the capacity even further, as walking people need to have more space between them than standing people, in order to avoid stepping on each others heels.

[kazinator]

Capacity is ultimately a measure of many people are passing a point per second, not about how well they squeeze together.

[efes]

Given that there are two escalators per direction, making the middle ones purely for walkers would probably create the necessary incentives to get ~2/3 walking to bypass the longer queues on the sides..

[eddieroger]

Well, the point of the article was that if people are standing on one side, you've only got half efficiency, so if they take a whole escalator and make it walkers only and double up the other one, nothing is gained. At least if the outer was stand only and the middle was current rule, there's a 25% increase.

[efes]

I think the article is missing the obvious point that the queue at the bottom affects walkers as well as standers even though it is being formed by the delays caused by standers needing more time on the escalator. Allow walkers up the middle well separated escalator without interference and many more people would walk.

[Swannie]

I doubt it. Even if you are relatively fit, many of these escalators are equivalent to 2 - 3 flights of stairs, after sitting standing in a hot carriage for 30mins plus.

The speed that you are expected to ascend as a "walker" is high. I know, because I used to climb every day, and I would get disapproving noises/looks if I failed to climb with sufficient speed.

[zimpenfish]

That doesn't apply everywhere - e.g. Cutty Sark DLR only has two escalators and I can think of a few places which have three shared between up/down (split on morning/evening peak traffic.)

[joncrocks]

I'd be interested to know if this was true.

People walking have to keep some space between them, and people also walk/climb stairs at different rates. You can only climb the escalator as fast as the person in front of you, and them the person in front of them. It only takes one slow-poke to hold everyone up.

So people not walking might in fact, on average, increase the throughput vs. all-walking.

[Shivetya]

why not have stairs between the escalators with arrows painted on them indicating up/down if not two sets clearly divided by the escalators themselves?

One thing to take into mind, you have to set your rules based on the lowest common denominator or the most disruptive. When people don't have any expectation of being punished for not respecting others or the rules they are in the most disruptive category. Hence they will stand on the left regardless and as such you need to adjust for it. Face it, there are just too many rude or don't care people in this world from a generation or two of being told its not your fault or others will adjust to you.

[apricot]

Well, you can ask...